Two legends gone in one day….absolutely gutting 🥹🙏 https://t.co/tMZ2hgkM8e
— Wu Tang is for the Children (@WUTangKids) July 13, 2024
Richard Simmons was the person who made exercising in public possible for millions of us, mostly women, who were incapable of meeting the Jane Fonda ‘ten pounds of stubborn baby weight’ standard. I mean that literally: pre-Simmons, a size 12 was XXXL in the aerobics section… if you were lucky. It was widely hailed as marketing genius when leotards and tights ‘suddenly’ appeared in the Plus Size department stores, but it was also a blessing for us shoppers!
Richard Simmons, self-proclaimed ‘pied piper of pounds,’ dies at 76 https://t.co/ZMT2mzWrG2
— Post Obituaries (@postobits) July 13, 2024
Worth reading the whole Washington Post obituary, so here’s a gift link:
Richard Simmons, the frizzy-haired fitness guru who championed positivity, exercise and healthy eating, and helped people lose millions of pounds through an idiosyncratic blend of earnestness and camp, died July 13 at his home in Los Angeles, a day after his 76th birthday…
Adopting playful titles like “The Pied Piper of Pounds” and “The Clown Prince of Fitness,” he led classes at his Beverly Hills exercise studio, Slimmons; published best-selling fitness guides, including the “Never-Say-Diet Book” (1980); promoted portion-control kits like Deal-a-Meal; and released hit workout videos including “Sweatin’ to the Oldies” (1988), in which he led aerobics routines to songs such as “Dancing in the Street” and “Great Balls of Fire,” backed by a live band in a gym setting meant to evoke a high school reunion.
A self-described “former fatty,” the 5-foot-7 Mr. Simmons “represented a much more accessible physical ideal” than svelte or muscle-bound peers like Jane Fonda and Jack LaLanne, said Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, a history professor at the New School in Manhattan and the author of “Fit Nation: The Gains and Pains of America’s Exercise Obsession.”
Recounting his story in books and exercise classes, Mr. Simmons said he had struggled with compulsive eating ever since he was a boy in New Orleans, entranced by opulent French Quarter restaurants and his parents’ home cooking. He “went directly from pablum to crêpes suzette,” weighed 268 pounds by the time he graduated from high school and became a plus-size model while studying in Italy as an exchange student, playing a dancing meatball, a bunch of grapes and an earthbound Peter Pan in commercials for food and underwear….
In a 2024 interview for this obituary, Petrzela said that Mr. Simmons was unique among his contemporaries in “welcoming and highlighting people who were not thin,” including by featuring them in his exercise videos.
She added that while he never discussed his sexuality, Mr. Simmons “brought a new, gender-bending aesthetic into mainstream America,” embodying “a kind of gender-line crossing flamboyance” that was more common to gay nightclubs than gyms. Cultural critic Rhonda Garelick, among others, described Mr. Simmons as “unmistakably camp,” writing in a 1995 article that his “elaborately constructed persona is part cheerleader, part father confessor, and part Broadway chorus boy.”…
The younger of two sons, Milton Teagle Simmons was born into a show-business family in New Orleans on July 12, 1948. His mother, the daughter of Russian Jewish immigrants, supported the family while working as a fan dancer; his father, who looked after the children, had once performed in a vaudeville act and emceed for big bands in Chicago.
To bring in extra money, Mr. Simmons sold pralines on street corners in the French Quarter — work he credited with teaching him how to work a crowd…
Late in his career, Mr. Simmons often noted that he found it difficult to talk with fans and students who told him about their struggles with weight loss and depression. He took their setbacks personally, he said, and cried more than he laughed. Prayer helped, as did keeping busy.
“People need the court jester, so I keep that smile on and keep going out there to do what I do,” he told Men’s Health magazine in 2012. He added, “I’m the clown you take out of the box and wind up when you need a good laugh. And then, when you’re done with me, I go back in my box.”
This is hard to explain to a younger generation, but back in the 80’s Simmons was one of the few unabashedly gay-acting men in public life, and Dr. Ruth was practically the only person who could talk frankly about sexuality on network television. Both pioneers in their way https://t.co/18WISm1p7X
— Pinboard (@Pinboard) July 13, 2024
Representation Matters: RIP, Dr. Ruth Westheimer / Richard SimmonsPost + Comments (40)
